The Four Corners Loop - Kevin Koski (Part II)

In Part 2, Kevin Koski explains how he once carried 14.5 liters of water across a 47-mile dry stretch in 102-degree heat, which is either impressive engineering or a cautionary tale, and possibly both. There is a smoked trout that Kevin is reasonably sure he received because a married woman was admiring his hiking legs a little too enthusiastically. There is a scaled 30-foot sandstone cliff that Kevin describes, with admirable understatement, as pretty sketchy. There is a sabbatical philosophy involving the literal opposite of hope. And there is a quieter, more serious moment in the middle of all of it — a permit given up, 13 days with his mother, and a trail picked back up exactly where she wanted him to be.

This half also covers Kevin's retirement countdown (seven months and counting), his book-in-progress, a Bigfoot investigation that yields nothing but blurry photos, and the correct way to negotiate a multi-month sabbatical from a stable engineering job, which involves never once using the word 'hope.' If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, start there — it dropped 10 minutes ago.